That's the fun of it. We have no idea. It could be an equivalent of the Vulcan "Live long and prosper", but do Andorians want other sentient aliens to live long and prosper?

I've used "Thiptho lapth" ever since seeing it in the Goldsteins' book and I love that context can make it mean whatever readers interpret it to mean. When Marco sent me an advance manuscript of "Andor: Paradigm", I suggested including the phrase; he liked the idea, but it was too late (the manuscript was sitting in an In-tray at Simon & Schuster Sydney for a few weeks before they sent it on.). Heather Jarman had assumed the phrase was my own creation.

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Thanks...I didn't know if it was like "Live long and prosper" or if it was more along the lines of "Employees are encouraged to wash hands after using toilet"...

I'm really glad that people are finding that thread of use. I was afraid that nobody would care. .

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I for one have found your 'Charting the Novel-verse' thread extremely interesting and useful, Turtletrekker. I've actually mined it extensively already for a project I'm working on. Thank you so much for all the information. If I have your blessing, I'm working on a website that will list everything connected in the Lit-verse in chronological order, with notes, for each series, and then a seperate chronological list of the entrie Lit-verse. I got about 80% of my info from your work, so I'd love your ok before I publish my site. (The other 20% of the info is from hours of scouring Memory-Beta and a few other places on the web. I've found about 15 or 20 more connections than are in the 'Charting the Novel-verse' thread.)

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Throw an acknowledgment my way and maybe a link to this thread, and we're golden.

I've added Dreams of the Raven by Carmen Carter to my '80s-continuity list above, since I double-checked and found that there is a passing use of John M. Ford's Klingon naming convention in the first paragraph. I'd skimmed through the book's Klingon scenes and didn't notice any particular Fordisms, but I missed that first page.

I apologize for necro-ing this thread, but I was wondering if any of the published novels to date which deal with Christopher Pike's tenure as Captain of the Enterprise would be compatible with or fit into the 80s chronology as outlined here.

This novel was written as ST V was underway, and DC Fontana (who had been outspoken about Shatner's intention to introduce an elder half-brother for Spock) was able to slip in a line that Spock was "the only son of Sarek", a cheeky snub of forthcoming not-yet-"canon".

Sorry if this is necro-posting, but I just thought of another couple of books that connect to the '80s novel/Spaceflight Chronology continuity: the first two Trek novels by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Memory Prime and Prime Directive. Both books connect to How Much for Just the Planet? by referencing the "4-dimensional dilithium" theory propounded in that book. Also, Memory Prime follows the SFC assumption that Alpha Centauri was home to an indigenous humanoid species rather than just being an Earth colony.

The tricky part is that Crisis on Centaurus, also in this continuity, treats Alpha Centauri purely as an Earth colony. But then, I mentioned earlier in the thread that the '80s continuity didn't hold together perfectly. And there's an existing inconsistency on just this point: Strangers from the Sky went with the SFC's notion that humanity's first alien contact was the Icarus meeting the Alpha Centaurians, but Spock's World substituted the Andorians (perhaps because Richard Arnold ordered any SFC references expunged?).

As for where they take place in the chronology, Prime Directive is apparently, per the prologue, in the final year of the "first" 5-year mission. But Memory Prime is explicitly "a few years" after the events of "The Lights of Zetar," which would suggest a placement in the second 5-year mission I posited above. I'm not aware of any evidence in PD which would preclude it from preceding MP.

So it's a borderline case whether they could really fit into the continuity listed above -- but the same probably goes for a number of the entries in that list. At least they are connected.

I've been reminded of a few details about Greg Bear's early ST novel Corona which might make it a candidate for inclusion with the '80s continuity, though it's very much a borderline case. For one thing, it purports to be a fair number of years after certain TOS episodes (and suggests Kirk is in his 40s), but is pre-TMP in terms of crew ranks, uniforms, etc., which would make it one of the books that assumed a second 5-year mission pre-TMP. (On the other hand, it implies that Spock is in his upper 70s, which is hard to reconcile with canon, since that would've put Amanda in her 90s at least in the TOS timeframe.) Also, it references one or two things that were mentioned elsewhere in the '80s continuity, such as the starship Bonhomme Richard. Not really a genuine cross-reference, though. So it's a really tentative link at best. And there are things about Corona that are kind of idiosyncratic interpretations of the Trek world (Spock's age being just one of them), so it might not be a very good fit with the rest of the '80s-verse. I'm undecided on the question, but I thought it was worth bringing up.

One interesting thing about the book, though, is that it seems to be the first-ever reference to the Federation News Service, an organization that was later established in canon (in Generations and DS9). Probably a coincidence, though.